Cannabis Science

Ask a Neuroscientist! Cannabis for Pregnancy, PTSD, Arthritis, and Beyond | An Interview with Dr. Michele Ross

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An interview with Neuroscientist Dr. Michele Ross about Cannabis Research, Stress and Trauma, Endocannabinoid Deficiency, Cannabis and Pregnancy, Infertility, PMS, PMDD, and more.

Dr. Michele Ross on Cannabis

Listen Now or Read The Transcript Below

Tell us About your background and your journey into cannabis?

I started off as a cannabis scientist first – who never used cannabis. I ended up needing cannabis for some severe health problems. I transitioned out of the lab working with rats and Petri dishes into working with humans and looking at how cannabis can help mental health, women’s health, and a whole host of other conditions.

To back it up a little bit, I have a doctorate in neuroscience. My very first paper was on whether cannabis (and synthetic cannabinoids) could actually grow or kill brain cells. We found that cannabinoids can grow brain cells. 

I was supposed to be studying all the ‘bad drugs’ or drugs of abuse and instead started to find out that some of these psychedelic drugs, including cannabis, were actually good for the brain. This was 13 years ago. 

Cannabis Science

I moved to California from Texas where I was doing the research and I got to go for the first time into a state where cannabis was legal (for medical marijuana at the time). I got to see this whole culture where people had grown up with cannabis being legal, and people were using it openly. I got to see the industry and meet patients. I was pulled to take what I knew from the lab and start applying that science knowledge to helping patients and working within the industry. 

Six/seven years ago, there wasn’t a lot of research in this space in the United States. There wasn’t a lot of education especially talking about using cannabis for women’s health or Lymes disease or autoimmune disorders, all these niche types of disorders. 

We know so much more about them now – but back in the day, we understood CBD for seizures or cannabis for terminal cancer patients or HIV. But no one quite understood how to use cannabis or even minor cannabinoids for other conditions. That sparked a fire under me. I’m a scientist, I’m always learning. So when I hear about the potential of cannabis to treat so many conditions, yet no one really knew how to explain it or really how to practice it – I get really excited.

I get even more excited because I had used cannabis as a patient myself. I ended up with nerve damage, fibromyalgia, a whole bunch of health issues. There was a period where I was on prescription drugs and they were horrible. I weaned myself off of them with cannabis and now only use cannabis for my treatment. When you consume cannabis yourself and you realize it is the solution to your health problems, it makes you passionate for not only treating patients but for educating as well.

I’ve done a lot of drug reform work –  working on legalization both in California and across the United States. if you had asked me maybe 10, 15 years ago if I would have been in the cannabis industry, I probably would’ve looked at you like you had three heads. But it’s one of the most rewarding things that I’ve ever done and I’m so happy to be in this industry. 

Do We Still Have a Long Way to Go in Terms of Cannabis Research?

Absolutely. Research isn’t keeping up with our technology. For example, we are able to now extract some of these minor cannabinoids like THCV or CBN or CBC and CBG.

There are tablets/pills on the market where people are taking CBN or THCV, but no one’s actually done a study on those cannabinoids. Like what happens when you take THCV by itself every single day? We don’t know.  

I’m always cautious. I believe in the full plant. How it is in nature is probably the version with the least side effects. When we start extracting just parts of it and making these new compounds that are almost similar to pharmaceuticals rather than whole-plant extracts, that can get sort of interesting. 

On the flip side, we might actually find out that some of these minor cannabinoids and terpenes are actually the perfect fit for some conditions that may not have really good pharmaceutical treatment. For example, CBN is really good for sleep.

We’re learning more about CBC and CBG and their potential for cancer. There’s so much potential in this plant and federal legalization will help pave the way for more research studies. 

Right now, I think the biggest hold up in this country is the fact that it’s still federally illegal. If you want to do research at universities like UCLA or other institutions, you can’t use cannabis industry money. You can’t get government funding for these studies. We’re SO excited to study it and yet because of this legal obstacle it’s so hard.

It’s sad for me to see some of these other countries go farther than us. Canada made it federally legal so they can basically study it for anything. Israel, they are running research that I tried to institute in the United States five years ago. We tried to do it and there were just so many obstacles. 

I’m also involved in psilocybin mushroom policy reform (see our interview with DoubleBling Mag) and we’re trying to make sure that some of the mistakes that happened with cannabis decriminalization and legalization don’t happen with another natural substance.

Mushrooms grow from the earth, right? They are very safe, similar to cannabis and yet we’re probably still going to have some of these challenges where even if we decriminalize mushrooms, are we allowed to study them at the universities in that form? The answer right now is probably no, and that’s why we’re going to have to write into the laws to protect research and the way that cannabis legalization didn’t really protect research. 

I loved what you said at SXSW about how stress and deep suppressed trauma are the root of all health issues and that cannabis can be part of the solution. And I wanted to share that with our listeners and maybe expand on that a little bit?

A lot of chronic illness is due to chronic stress and also trauma. A lot of us are traumatized and we don’t even realize it. PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder is something that happens to not just veterans. It can happen into policemen, to ER doctors and nurses. It can happen to women that have been sexually assaulted. It can happen to so many of us. 

There’s also micro traumas. Instances where you saw somebody get shot or somebody said something that was deeply racist and hurtful to you. Some people go through these microtraumas not just once in their life, but daily. Especially if you are a marginalized member of society. 

I think that especially women are holding on to not only trauma since they were born and as they grow up through life and navigate life (they’re continually traumatized), but they’re also carrying trauma from past iterations. Our mothers didn’t have it easy, our grandma’s didn’t have it easy. Look at how women have been treated in society. We are definitely victims of trauma.

We tend to store pain in different parts of our body. You’re going to store that trauma in your hip, in your neck, in your back. If you don’t deal with some of those emotional issues, it doesn’t matter how many opioids you use. It doesn’t matter how much cannabis you smoke, you’re never really going to get that pain out. 

It’s mindset work. Cannabis, when used appropriately in a certain set and setting, can really help with trauma.

Cannabis stimulates your cannabinoid receptors, which are found all over the body and brain. There’s a specific region called the hippocampus, which is the brain region I did most of my research work on. That brain region is the region that’s important for learning and memory. When you stimulate your cannabinoid receptors, you’re actually jump-starting this circuitry that helps you forget – not helps you learn – It helps you forget. 

Thinking about trauma – think about what PTSD is. PTSD is characterized by people having nightmares. They’re having too many thoughts and reliving their trauma. So imagine if you could help somebody rewire their brain, help them to forget or at least focus less on that horrible thing that happens to them and let that go so that they can move forward.

That is how healing happens. If you can finally let go of that trauma, you might not hurt so badly anymore. Your total stress levels would go down. 

A lot of us are dealing with stress but we’re not even conscious about it. It’s subconscious. But we’re constantly battling that stress and holding that in our body. I think that when cannabis is used with a proper mindset,  we can start to physiologically heal stress and trauma and physically heal pain. 

Explain to people what endocannabinoid deficiency is and how it can be balanced?

Endocannabinoid deficiency was a theory that was put out by Dr. Ethan Russo several years ago. Basically, your body has this endocannabinoid system. You make endogenous cannabinoids like anandamide and 2hg. You have cannabinoid receptors, CB1 and CB2. You have enzymes that make endocannabinoids, you have enzymes that break them down. 

There are things that can go wrong within the system and make it so that you are not getting enough endocannabinoid system signaling [Thus, Endocannabinoid Deficiency].

Endocannabinoid deficiency can be treated by taking in more cannabinoids. If you’re not having enough cannabinoid system signaling, you can use THC or CBD to help stimulate those receptors and restore balance. 

The reason why you want endocannabinoid system balance is that the endocannabinoid system is regulating every other neurotransmitter system in your body. From Serotonin, dopamine, glutamate, Gaba, everything that regulates your sleep, your eating, your feelings, your thoughts, your movement, everything. 

When you are out of balance in the endocannabinoid system, you’re out of balance in everything. When talking about cannabis being a treatment for so many different conditions, it’s because again, the endocannabinoid system regulates heart function, movement, memory, so many different things. 

I wrote a book called Vitamin Weed. The reason why I use vitamin weed as a term is to help people take the stigma off of it. If we think about cannabis as a nutrient that we need to be taking every day to restore endocannabinoid deficiency, it makes it a lot less scary. It makes it sound a lot less like a drug people are using to get high. 

I compare it a lot to vitamin D. Vitamin D is a nutrient. At one point the government said, ‘we don’t need anymore vitamin D pills. We get enough vitamin D in our diet’. Then they did studies where they tested the blood levels of vitamin D in Americans and found out that they were getting way low levels of vitamin D and they did need supplementation.

Vitamin D is important for everything from your mood to how you burn fat – over a hundred different things. People that are depressed sometimes just need a vitamin D prescription, they don’t need Prozac. 

Here we have a very similar system, the government hasn’t really taught us anything about the endocannabinoid system. It’s not taught in medical school, yet it seems to be a simple solution to a lot of illnesses. Take some CBD or take some cannabis, restore this endocannabinoid deficiency and you will start to feel better. 

Cannabis is right for most people and it will help bring our bodies back into balance.

Cannabis and pregnancy. Can you just tell us a little bit about the research related to cannabis or CBD use while pregnant and or breastfeeding?

Cannabis and pregnancy is a touchy subject. There are a couple of reasons for this. One, is in clinical research it’s hard to do research on pregnant women. When you don’t know whether a substance will be harmful to a fetus, you’re not supposed to do that study. 

Pregnant women are a class of a subject that are protected. There are certain people like young children that are hard to do studies on unless it’s an end of life scenario where they are dying of cancer.

Cannabis’ impact on the brain has not been quite understood. When we look at the research, there are a couple of things that are really interesting. A lot of the research on cannabis and pregnancy was done before legalization. 

Think about gray market cannabis. You’re smoking some dirt weed that hasn’t been tested and isn’t quality cannabis. You’re smoking a joint as a pregnant woman. There are several problems here. First – you are smoking. You’re not using tinctures or other cleaner forms. Second – You don’t really know what’s in that cannabis. 

Third, a lot of women that were smoking cannabis joints before legalization might have also been drinking, doing other drugs, or smoking cigarettes for example. When we look at the old research, we find that almost 100% of women that were smoking cannabis were also smoking cigarettes. So it is hard to parse out the effects of cannabis or THC versus cigarettes and the, the various toxins that are associated with it.

I did some research on cannabis and brain cell growth. It’s interesting because CBD will actually stimulate brain cell growth, but there are no real studies about CBD and pregnancy. There are no studies about just THC and tinctures in edible form and not in the smokeable form during pregnancy. 

What we do know is that there was one study in Jamaica where women were using cannabis and the primary form they were using it as pregnant women in Jamaica was in a cannabis tea. They were getting a little bit of THC, but also a lot of THCA, which is the raw version of THC. The raw form doesn’t cross the blood-brain barrier and also relieves nausea and pain, relieves many things that might bother a pregnant woman. Nausea and vomiting was the number one reason people are using cannabis in the first place while they’re pregnant.

What this study showed and what some other studies are now showing is that there’s not significant harms to brain development in children. In fact, there are lots of children that have been born healthy to women that have used cannabis. There’s more anecdotal evidence for this then there is, say, published research. 

We do know that THC and CBD pass through the Placenta. We know that it passes through breast milk. So there is some exposure. However, the children are actually being exposed to a little bit less CBD and THC than we would think. 

So we always have to be cognizant of, okay, the mother is going to be using cannabis or CBD. Don’t use smokeable forms. That way you can make sure that they’re not going to be exposed to toxins like ammonia that are produced when you smoke a substance. Can you take the lowest possible dose for whatever you’re trying to do if you’re using cannabis for say, nausea and vomiting, which is again, a very important reason for women to be doing this. 

If you don’t get enough nutrition during pregnancy, your child could actually be very sick. You can have a very dangerous pregnancy. Just try to take the lowest amount possible. There are a lot of studies now popping up, especially in California because it is legal to all adults in the state. They’re going to be looking at some of these things. Right now there are so many questions from mothers and so many questions from practitioners.

It’s not like cannabis legalization all of a sudden caused pregnant women to start using cannabis. I think legalization started making women feel okay to talk about it with their doctor because they weren’t fearful that they might be going to jail or lose their child to child protective services or CPS.

Right now we don’t know everything, but we do know that cannabis and CBD do not cause brain damage. They do not cause birth defects. In fact, the number one fact I can tell you is that there was research on both THC and CBD for clinical trials as Marinol and epidiolex and they did not find either of those substances caused any issues in pregnancy or later child development. 

If the government says that Cannabis doesn’t cause brain damage, I think that’s a pretty good, way to feel comfortable if you are a mother using it. 

Doctors just want to be able to conclusively say that and be confident about it. There are prescription drugs that are given to women and some of them are not as safe as you would think. THC is actually in the pregnancy class C so it’s not super dangerous. It’s just that we could know more. 

I think the official policy is of most countries and states is that pregnant women shouldn’t be using it. But again, there are much more dangerous things women can be using, including some prescription drugs.

Tell us About Infertility?

One of my favorite things to explore that I haven’t seen any studies looking at yet is infertility. 

Thinking about anxiety and stress being a real reason why it’s hard for women to get pregnant. If either partner is consuming cannabis or CBD and they’re relieving a little bit of stress, they might be able to conceive and not have to go through IVF or more expensive types of procedures. People will always ask, okay, what does cannabis or CBD do to sperm and eggs and fetal development? But we just don’t have all the facts.

How does cannabis interact with hormones like estrogen and progesterone? Can it help alleviate things like PMS or PMDD?

This is actually one of my favorite things to talk about. Women are so much more interesting than men when it comes down to our hormones. Were always cycling with our estrogen and progesterone levels and we’re also cycling with our endocannabinoid levels. It’s interesting: when we feel those symptoms of say, pms, that’s actually when our endocannabinoid system is at its lowest. 

So our anandamide levels are low. When our estrogen levels are high, we have high anandamide levels. When talking about using cannabis or CBD to help boost our endocannabinoid system – I think it’s so important that women use cannabis as soon as they start feeling any of those symptoms.

We all know when our period is coming. Almost 80% of women have some sort of pain associated with their cycle. One in 10 women have endometriosis, which is a very significant, pain disorder associated with reproductive health. We know that cannabis can help these different diseases or conditions. 

PMDD is a considered a mental disorder that is related to depression and associated with those changes in hormones around your cycle. It’s actually something that I suffered from and I was put on hormonal birth control for years to help try to balance that out.

It turns out that cannabis is actually very helpful for reducing any type of depression or anxiety that happen when your hormone levels drop. I really do think that cannabis can almost act like a bioidentical hormone. 

THC can act a lot like progesterone. It can act like estrogen. It can almost act like hormonal replacement therapy or HRT. So when we’re dipping in our estrogen levels or progesterone, when we feel like crap, if you take cannabis, it’s going to help stimulate some of those same systems. The cannabinoid receptors can actually interact with estrogen receptors too. There’s some things that we’re just at the tip of the iceberg learning about.

We know that increasing an anandamide is going to make us feel better. If we’re actually stimulating cannabinoid receptors, they’re somehow sending a signal to the estrogen receptors. If we could feel good and balanced before we have to go through our cycles, that would be amazing. Cannabis can help with pain relief. It can help with spasms, which was why it’s so good for cramps. It can help with mood elevation, just so many amazing things. 

I think it’s definitely a woman’s best friend. If you haven’t tried CBD or cannabis in any form, whether it’s topical tinctures, even vaginal suppositories, please go for it. It’s the kind of cure that doesn’t have a whole bunch of side effects. Even like taking an Advil, I feel bad about, because it’s bad for your liver.

To be able to use CBD or cannabis just feels better to me. It has been used in other cultures. It’s an indigenous medicine. I love the return of ancient wisdom plus modern technology. Cannabis (with the clinical research that’s going on) is finally like catching up. Women have trusted cannabis for so long and it’s finally getting its reputation back. 

Cannabis and menopause, how can it help? How can it hurt? 

In my work with women and many of the physicians that I’ve talked to, there really is no downside of using cannabis for menopause. Except potentially some drug interactions with prescription drugs that are given for menopause.

Some of the symptoms of menopause include hot flashes, night sweats, and insomnia. You have risk of osteoporosis once your estrogen levels go down, and that’s bone loss. You have symptoms like vaginal dryness. That’s what happens when estrogen levels go down. 

THC and to a lesser effect, CBD by stimulating an anadimine can help balance out the ednocannabinoid system and offset some of these things. We know that cannabinoids are really helpful for getting people to go to sleep and stay asleep, but that’s half the battle with menopause. Even peri-menopause you can feel fatigued, sleepy, irritable before you even actually enter menopause.

One thing that I want to touch on is osteoporosis risk. Many women worry that when you get older, your bones thin and there is risk of breaking them.

We know that a specific cannabinoid called THCV can actually rebuild bones. So I actually see a future where women are taking products with THCV (you can find it in strains like Durban poison) for osteoporosis. Of course, we don’t have any clinical research in humans yet, but hopefully we know a little bit more in five or 10 years. 

Now the hot topic of every menopausal woman is, oh my goodness, “how do I have better sex? I have no sex drive. I’m dried up them there. It’s, it’s the worst”.

For vaginal dryness, definitely cannabis lubrications and topicals are great. Whether it’s THC, or CBD it’s going to help with moisture. You’re also going to likely increase your libido and the intensity of your orgasms. So it’s a win-win. For any woman that’s scared of using cannabis for menopause I say step one: get a topical. Step two: if that feels good, get a tincture or edible. 

Some women prefer to smoke. That’s okay. But I always stress trying to stay away from smoke, especially if you are on estrogen replacement therapy or hormone replacement therapy.Because again toxins like ammonia could be a little bit harmful when you’re taking hormone replacement therapies.

CBD for Pets in Droppers

What would you say is the healthiest way to ingest? Does the manner of ingesting impact its efficacy for different conditions? 

With my clients I suggest sublingual administration. Taking a tincture, your dosing goes under the tongue and then you wait 30 seconds for it to be absorbed through your cheek and tounge and then swallow the rest. 

What’s really neat about that method is that you are actually absorbing it straight into your blood stream. You’re bypassing the liver, which is key when you’re trying to avoid drug interactions with any prescription drugs. It’s not getting processed, its just going straight to your brain, your body, wherever you need it. 

The little bit that you’re swallowing does go through your digestive track and processes through the liver, similar to taking an edible. So you actually ended up getting instant relief within 10 to 15 minutes by taking it under the tongue. But then you’re also getting a little boost or bump about 60 minutes later because it’s being broken down through your digestive track. 

I think tinctures are a very healthy way to use cannabis because unlike smoking flower or concentrates, which may have say solvent’s or toxins – you’re getting basically pure MCT oil and cannabis. MCT is actually a coconut oil that is very healthy for your body. By itself, even if it didn’t have CBD or THC, it is anti-inflammatory and has a lot of health benefits. 

Cannabinoids like THC or CBD need fat to be more bioavailable and in our body. So it’s important that MCT oil is a fat. So when we’re using it, our body’s absorbing all of the Cannabinoids. It’s not like we’re just using them and we’re peeing them out, like a vitamin C tablet. 

Tinctures are healthy (make sure cannabis is grown without pesticides) without solvents, and without ammonia. It’s also easy for people to dose and people the dose. I don’t think that everyone understands how many milligrams they might be smoking in a joint – but it’s very easy to go look on a dropper that has markings on it and say I’m getting five milligrams of THC. You can get a consistent dose, you can track it with an app or a journal (see our interview with Goldleaf about cannabis journaling), but know exactly how much you’re putting in your body and how that’s making you feel.

in Colorado and I’ve tried a ton of different products (see SUM Microdose Review) that claim to be sublingual, but maybe it’s a dissolvable tablet. Does something like that not have the same benefits without the fats? 

The sublingual tablets are definitely valuable. They definitely work. You might not be getting the oils in there, but with a sublingual tablet, you’re not swallowing much. Most of it is going through your cheek or your tongue. I am partial to the tinctures because there are other components in the full plant extract that help with bioavailability and also have some other health benefits.

Some of the tablets have a lot of terpenes in them. Some of them don’t. Of course it varies from brand to brand. We don’t have as much experience with some of the sublingual strips and tablets as we do with the tinctures. 

I also just wanted to point out that you mentioned making sure your tincture doesn’t have pesticides, that it’s organic. The industry is still so new that maybe not everybody knows to think about that can you comment?

Hemp is an amazing plant, when you plant hemp it pulls up different heavy metals from the soil as well as pesticides and things like that. So if you are consuming a tincture made of hemp that was grown outdoors and perhaps was not grown on the cleanest land, it will have all this junk in it. Lead. Mercury. Toxic gunk. That’s not medicine. 

I hear people say all the time: “I took this CBD oil and I started throwing up or I felt sick or got a headache”. You have to go through and say, okay, what was the brand? Was it tested for mold? Was it tested for pesticides? Was it tested for heavy metals? Many of the products on the market aren’t tested because it’s not required that they be tested. 

I just went to a testing lab in Los Angeles called Canna safe. It is so important to be able to test for all these things. Some people may not be affected at all, but there are other patients that are very ill and can’t tolerate anything. If you have an autoimmune disorder, if you have epilepsy, if you have cancer, you should not be consuming more toxins.

 It’s very important that you use products that have been lab tested and tested for more than one thing. Make sure that they have full panels. You have to do your research.

I have a company called infused health and we have coaches here in California and other places that can help patients understand drug interactions, understand what the different methods are for consumption, look at their medical history and look at what’s available in their local markets and come out with the best idea for two to three products that might actually work for them. It’s very personalized medicine.

Talk to us about cannabis interactions with other drugs that people should be aware of?

I’ll talk about CBD because it has the potential for the worst side effects. CBD will inhibit P450 liver enzymes that break down medications. If you’ve ever seen a label on your medication that says ‘do not take with grapefruit’, CBD does something very similar to grapefruit for most medications. 

What will happen if you use CBD and prescription drugs, is you will have higher blood levels of the drug you are taking. For example, if you are taking an epilepsy drug and CBD and the CBD inhibited the breakdown of this drug, you would have way too high levels of your epilepsy drug.

You might feel horrible, you might feel sick. A lot of people think everyone should take CBD for epilepsy but if you are already on prescribed drugs it can have bad interactions.

Earlier in the podcast, I talked a little bit about how sublingual administration of CBD or THC bypasses the liver. So if you want to take CBD while on other drugs, try to take a sublingual to bypass those potential cannabis interactions. 

That’s why it’s important in talking to a clinician because the average consumer is not like, ‘well, I’m on a blood thinner, I heard blood thinners and CBD don’t mix’. I don’t know what to do. People can end up with dangerous drug interactions. A lot of people are on drugs that can interact with CBD. Of course the higher dose of CBD use, the more likely you are to have a drug interaction. Most people are in the wellness dose range. So it would say if you’re taking about five to 10 milligrams of CBD per day it’s not going to be as likely to cause a really big interaction with your drug as compared to a cancer patient or say an epilepsy patient or somebody with schizophrenia that might be taking, you know, a hundred milligrams or more of CBD a day.

I really do suggest that you talk to a clinician that is experienced and it might not be your actual normal doctor because most doctors have had zero education on this. Even in legal states, doctors aren’t always 100% informed and it’s important to find someone that can help you if you are taking prescriptions. I think that once cannabis is legal, I’tl be a little bit easier for doctors. 

Arthritis pain relief – are there any best combinations or products for that?

Arthritis is very responsive to cannabinoids, thank goodness. Topical CBD, Topical THC or even THCA is really effective at reducing inflammation and pain in the joints.

Hand, wrist, arm, wherever you experience arthritis. Ideally you would want to use a topical and an ingestible form to be able to reduce inflammation and keep it low. The less inflammation you have, the less pain you have and the more mobility you’re going to have. One Cannabinoid in particular that’s amazing for arthritis is THCA part of that is because it’s non psychoactive. 

Can you talk about the link between cannabis and psychosis? 

I think it’s important to note that no drug, including cannabis is right for everyone, especially those that may have an underlying mental health disorder (whether it’s been diagnosed or not). 

For example, if you have bipolar disorder and you use THC, um, you may be more prone to a psychiatric episode. If you have the genetics for schizophrenia and you consume cannabis, you might actually increase the onset of it, which means that you might have your first schizophrenia episode a year earlier than you might have. 

There is definitely a link between cannabis and psychosis. The average person smoking a joint will not have a psychotic episode. Again, there seems to be some kind of background or some kind of brain chemistry that makes you more prone. 

What are your One, five, and 10 year industry predictions?

One year industry prediction. Well, I wish I was predicting that cannabis would be legal in 1 year. Well it will be 2020. Who knows? I’ve heard rumblings that something is going to change in 2020…

 I think cannabis legalization, whether that’s one to two years from now, will see change. I think the amount of investors that are investing in cannabis companies, I still think that there’s a lot of stigma and fear around cannabis being legal that is blocking some international investors from participating in this market. But I assume we are going to have federal cannabis legalization or decriminalization of some form and that is going to change banking and that’s going to change our investments.It’s going to change how we do business. 

Five year industry prediction. I think that in five years we’re actually gonna have a lot of the research published that people are now starting. Everything from cannabis and pregnancy research to learning about what these minor cannabinoids like THCV do. I think that we’re also going to be farther along with the science of how to produce these cannabinoids in yeast or bacteria and we’re going to have a lot more of these cannabinoids at a lower point price. 

It’s not going to be rare to see a THCV product or CBN or CBC. In fact, we’re going to see lots of them on the market and we’re going to start to have some of the data on how they work in 10 years.

Post federal legalization will be time for all the policies that hospitals and universities all over the place will have adapted to this new legal system. I think our cannabis industry will be thriving. I think that coupled with the research we’ll be able to mow much more powerfully say, okay, cannabis is very good for fibromyalgia. We know how to dose it, we know what products you need for it. I think coupled with apps and AI, artificial intelligence, I think that there’ll be a lot less guesswork and I think that will be very similar to some of these other medications where  we might be able to say, here’s your genetics, here’s what your medical history was. This is the exact cannabinoid products you need and the correct dose.

There may even be custom products because we’re going to have these single cannabinoids that can be 3D printed. I think that cannabinoid medicine is literally going to change the face of healthcare. 

Is there anything else you want to add?

We covered so much from dosing, to education, to policy reform. I want to pitch again that you have to see a professional if you are a patient on numerous medications before starting cannabi

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